CISN Country’s American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks #1 Song of the Week

Second week at #1 for Lanco’s Greatest Love Story on CISN Country’s American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks. ACC is heard every Saturday 8am-Noon on CISN Country 103.9.

Lanco are closing out 2017 on a high note, their single Greatest Love Story is currently spending a second week in the #1 spot at country radio. After Lanco made its Grand Ole Opry debut this fall, Greatest Love Story rocketed to #1 on the iTunes country charts. It has become one of the biggest country hits of the year, recently certified gold for selling 500,000 copies. They’ll carry that momentum forward into 2018, when they release their debut LP Hallelujah Nights on January 19th.

Produced by Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Little Big Town), Hallelujah Nights combines the four songs from the group’s 2016 EP Long Live Tonight, Greatest Love Story, We Do” and Trouble Maker with seven new songs, all of which were written or co-written by frontman Brandon Lancaster. The band Lancaster, bassist Chandler Baldwin, multi-instrumentalist Jared Hampton, drummer Tripp Howell and lead guitarist Eric Steedly formed in Nashville but its members hail from Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky. Hallelujah Nights is already available as a limited edition pre-order.

The band put Greatest Love Story on Spotify long before it was officially released as a single in March, and it caught the attention of Nate Chetty, a writer for Netflix’s rural comedy “The Ranch,” which returns for new episodes Dec. 15. The creative team was looking for a meaningful track that could play during an emotional scene in the ninth episode, in which Colt (Ashton Kutcher) sees his soul mate/ex-girlfriend, Abby (Elisha Cuthbert), get engaged to another man.

Greatest Love Story had two things going for it, according to “The Ranch” creator Jim Patterson. First, the lyrics are about an on-again, off-again couple, which describes Colt and Abby’s story. Second Lanco’s status as a new band made it easier and cheaper to license. “We’ll go out and use a Kenny Chesney song, but those songs are usually more expensive for these established artists,” Patterson said. “So we try to find artists who are up-and-coming so we can feature them, because it helps us financially as well.”

So, as Greatest Love Story played over a closing scene of a dejected-looking Kutcher, it played into the end credits as well, which sent fans to their phones to type questions like “What was the song and artist played at the ending credits of The Ranch episode 9?” The episode started streaming when Season 1 debuted in April 2016, and because of Netflix’s binge-watching model, new people can continually discover the show and by extension, the Lanco song at any time.

Known for their energetic live shows, the band is currently on the road with Dustin Lynch’s Ride or Die Tour. Lanco will be ending 2017 with a stop at Los Angeles’ legendary Troubadour on Dec. 11 and will join up with Chris Young’s Losing Sleep World Tour in early 2018. Canadian fans can catch Lanco at Thunder Country in Craven Saskatchewan Friday July 13th.